Though never a fan of George W. Bush, I hereby join the chorus of praise of the former president for his landmark speech yesterday in which he lambasted Donald Trump without ever mentioning him by name. Dubya’s remarks amounted to a worthy summation of true Americanism and a warning against the bully-boy brand of politics practiced by Trump. He condemned the excessive nationalism touted by the current occupant of the White House, arguing that it alienates America from many of its democratic friends around the world. Bush also...

The results of yesterday’s primaries and caucuses in more than a dozen states make it ever more likely that the outcome of this year’s general election will pivot to a certain extent on competing views of Barack Obama’s presidency. This is going to make more than a few Republicans squirm uncomfortably. Lots of rank-and-file GOPers have eagerly swallowed the party line that Obama has been a failure as president. But, of course, that’s a false judgment if you consider the terrible situation Obama inherited...

One of the oddest aspects of the current presidential campaign is the penchant among all but one of the Republican candidates to pretend that the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 did not occur when George W. Bush was the nation’s chief executive. This curious mindset was first exposed when Jeb Bush declared at one of the early campaign debates that his brother kept America safe from terrorism during his two terms as president. Yes, he did keep us safe — except for that one day when thousands of Americans were killed in...

In some political debates, the misreprentations don’t jump out at you right away. Sometimes you have to wait until the fact-checkers pore over the transcript looking for claims that got fudged in one way or another. Such was not the case, however, at last night’s Republican presidential debate — at least not in the case of a first-class whopper offered by Jeb Bush. It came during a discussion of Jeb’s brother George W. Bush, whose failures as president seem to have faded somewhat from the national consciousness....

George W. Bush is not entirely faultless in the CIA torture scandal, but neither is he as culpable as other officials in his administration. More to the point, Bush and the American public in general have a right to ask in retrospect why the CIA torture regimen was kept a secret from him. If there was nothing immoral or illegal about the program, why wasn’t the commander-in-chief told about it? THIS was the situation: President George W. Bush was never briefed by the Central Intelligence Agency on the details of harsh interrogation...